Black bag waste could be accepted again at a recycling centre near Gorseinon after a change of heart from Swansea’s Labour administration.

Council chiefs had put a stop to it last September following a consultation, saying it would encourage people to recycle more.

Now the city's Labour administration wants to reverse the policy at Garngoch recycling site.

It is also pledging no reduction on the current arrangement of three black bin bags per household per fortnight, if it is re-elected in the local Government elections on May 4. It is also keen to explore the idea of creating two new recycling sites to add to the current five in Swansea.

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While Swansea has made huge strides in recycling — saving millions of pounds in landfill tax in the process — the council has said that black bag waste taken to recycling sites contained up to 70 per cent of items that could be recycled.

Banning black bag waste at Garngoch ruffled some residents’ feathers in the north-west of the county, who faced a longish trip to dispose of it elsewhere. A similar ban was introduced in Tir John, Port Tennant, and then at Penlan.

Commenting on the coverage of the changes last year, Evening Post reader Dave White said: “This will not last, it will not be cost-effective. More staff will be needed to be required to check items. More increases in fly-tipping. People are recycling but the council is going too far with this.”

And Anita Pugh added: “Guaranteed to increase fly-tipping. People may have bags full of genuinely non-recyclables, but who wants strangers rummaging through their personal and hygiene items?”

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Clare Hughes said: “Manufacturers of food should change their packaging so more can be recycled. It’s ridiculous that you can’t recycle orange juice cartons.”

The black bag ban does not apply to Llansamlet and Clyne in Derwen Fawr, although visitors to both recycling sites have to make sure their black bags are free of recyclable waste, including leftover food.

Clyne Household Waste Recycling Centre Swansea

The bigger picture shows that Swansea recycles and composts around 60 per cent of its municipal waste — the figure for July to September last year was 63.7 per cent, a little below the 65.6 per cent Wales-wide average. The figure for Neath Port Talbot during that period was 67.1 per cent, while Carmarthenshire’s was 65.3 per cent.

The percentage of our waste that's recycled, per area

Wales’s 22 councils therefore seem on course to hit the Welsh Government’s 64 per cent recycling target by 2020, although that target rises to 70 per cent in 2025 with the ever-present threat of Welsh Government fines for failing authorities.

This is how people have reacted to the change

He admitted forgetting to put his black bag waste out from time to time every fortnight.

“We used to take our one bag of rubbish, and whatever recycling we had, down to the tip (at Garngoch),” he said.

Since last September the nearest option was the Llansamlet recycling site.

Mr Morgan added: “I always thought the temptation to fly-tip was made much greater by not having the facility to deposit black bags. We did see a few more black bags at the top of Swansea Road which we didn’t see before.”

The council, however, said there had been a decrease in fly-tipping at Garngoch because people no longer left black bags at the entrance when the site was closed in the evenings.

The latest fly-tipping figures for Swansea showed 6,040 recorded incidents in 2015-16, compared to 4,415 and 2,702 in the two previous years.

Peter Troy, of Cwmdu, said he wanted the council to re-open the Penlan recycling site to black bag waste, and that he had emailed two cabinet members accordingly.